A stone chimney sticking out of the grass marks a barren hillside once covered in mining cottages. Another 2km west, tucked between gorse-ridden hills, a cluster of cottages make up what’s left of Glen Afton, a village once built around a coal mine.

The Waikato township, located 15km west of Huntly, would be easy to miss without looking for it.

There’s no corner store, no petrol station, no community hall and the township’s famed bar was reduced to ash after it was set alight two years ago.

‘‘Are you lost?’’ a local asks curiously, sticking his head out of his white cottage as he spots an outsider.

Few realise that the sleepy hamlet is the site of one of the country’s worst mining disasters, John Reid, who has lived in Glen Afton for more than 55 years, says.

The village took on a tragic historical significance after 11 men lost their lives in the Glen Afton Mine when a fire ignited underground on September 24, 1939.

A Mines Rescue Unit was established for the Waikato following the disaster.

But three decades after the disaster, the mine – like many in the area – closed after the amount of coal produced began to wane.

These days the village has almost faded into oblivion.

A handful of staunchly proud locals remember the township in its heyday, dotted with shops, a cinema, post offices, sports clubs, a tennis court and a doctor’s surgery.

There was a busy train service to Huntly and a five minute drive in either direction would bring you to the equally bustling townships of Rotowaro or Pukemiro.

Reid remembers watching Yellowstone Kelly at the pictures, go-kart racing around the football paddock and heading into the Glen Afton Mine with his father as a child.

‘‘You’d never go anywhere else. Everything was here.’’

THE GLEN AFTON DISASTER

The disaster began with a small fire in the airway of the mine. Workers doused it with water, mixing the sodden embers with coal and stone dust.

But the next day, four men were sent into the mine after an issue was located at the Waikato Electric Power Board and traced back to Glen Afton.

More and more workers headed into the fume-filled underground to rescue those that hadn’t returned. Some headed into the mines with birds, with their collapse signalling to the men when the carbon monoxide levels were too high.

As body after body was pulled from the mine, the Glen Afton Hall became a makeshift mortuary and a ‘‘pall of gloom’’ hung over the township, newspapers reported.

Some men emerged from the mine with aching heads and legs giving way, according to newspaper reports. Some of the men staggered from the mine into the fresh air, before walking back to the entrance, and heading back inside.

It’s part of a miners’ code, Reid, who once worked as an underground electrician.

‘‘When you work underground it’s a different atmosphere because you trust your workmates, they hold your life in their hands quite often, because what they do or don’t do can cause things that could kill you.’’

While Reid wasn’t alive during the disaster, the devastation was still palpable in his day.

It affected the tight-knit mining community in the same way the Pike River Mine Disaster would, 71 years later.

‘‘It lasted a long, long time here.’’ Those who died were William Rae Bell, Christopher Blackburn, William Brown, James Clark, Walter George Cole, George Hunter, Richard Ireland, John ‘‘Jack’’ Marshall, William Peden, Raymond Vivian Turley and William Wilcox. Their deaths left 24 children fatherless.

‘‘But it’s all forgotten about. People drive past – the road used to go through Glen Afton but you bypass it now – and people have no idea what they’re passing.’’

These days the towns built around mining are ‘‘little ghosts of what they used to be’’.

Reid, chairperson of the community

committee, believes that’s changing, though.

Younger families have begun moving into the village and the committee is making plans to rebuild its beloved drinking hole, The Blue Rooms.

‘‘It’s still a beautiful place to live,’’ he says.

A memorial site is being built to honour the 11 victims of the mining disaster.

Reid envisions, in years to come, people visiting Glen Afton on the restored railway, having a picnic or meal at The Blue Rooms and then visiting the memorial.

‘‘Whether you’d driven through [Glen Afton] or not, you’d never know why it was here. There’s no evidence of any mine.

‘‘I really want to see [the memorial finished] with a board to say why it is here. To honour those people.

‘‘Let people know the history of the place, why we are here.’’

THE MINE’S CLOSURE

It took another 30 years after the disaster for the mine – which had produced coal for milk processing plants – to close in 1969. Residents in the area rapidly dwindled as workers moved to find new work.

Before its closure, Russell Webb, born and bred in Glen Afton, says it was still the ‘‘greatest place in the world to grow up’’, even decades after the disaster.

He had worked at the Glen Afton Mine, but had to move away to find work once it closed.

It’s hard to picture these days, he admits, but it was a bustling place.

‘‘There were heaps of houses here,’’ Webb says, gesturing to the hillside surrounding the Pukemiro Junction. ‘‘This train line was one of the busiest in New Zealand.’’

And five minutes down the road, Pukemiro had a butchery, a bakery, two grocery stores, another movie theatre, another post office and another doctors’ surgery.

The last census recorded 315 people living in Glen Afton and Pukemiro combined, the two remaining villages.

But it’s central – little more than an hour away from Auckland and 40 minutes away from both Hamilton and Raglan.

Recently a young man, sick of expensive rent, bought a cheap house there, Webb said.

More houses are being built as more workers become willing to commute to Hamilton or Auckland.

‘‘It’s starting to come back again.’’

THE TOWNSHIP’S FUTURE

David Mann is the live-in caretaker at the Bush Tramway Club, a volunteer-led organisation restoring and preserving the railways at the Pukemiro junction.

His father, Bob Mann, founded the club back in the 1960s, Mann says, cupping a mug of tea with paint-stained hands.

He’s sitting at a table behind a dilapidated building, next to rustcoloured tracks which disappear into thick bush.

A few ramshackle cabins line the tracks, gardens full of rosemary and lavender, tended by Mann.

Behind where he sits, clothes are soaking in a non-electronic washing machine.

‘‘This is a leftover, really. It’s a little part of Kiwiana that has disappeared.’’

These days, the 26km between Huntly and Waingaro is a bit of ‘‘a desert’’.

Occasionally people dump cats or roosters in the area, which usually find a home at the junction.

On the first Sunday every month, the Bush Tramway Club holds passenger rides for the public.

The smiles of children who have never seen a steam train before makes all the volunteering worth it, Mann says.

‘‘You take them away from their screens and their games.

‘‘You take them up to a machine that has fire in it.

‘‘You see the look on their face and that’s the reward. It’s grassroots.’’

Sometimes he wonders about his father, how he’d feel to see how many people flock to the railway each first Sunday of the month.

‘‘He’d be blown away.’’